Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Path: utzoo!censor!comspec!scocan!david
From: david@sco.COM (David Fiander)
Subject: Re: Need HELP getting address past MMDF
Organization: SCO Canada, Inc.
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1991 13:14:39 GMT
Message-ID: <1991Jun20.131439.18385@sco.COM>
Keywords: MMDF UUCP mail help
References: <1991Jun19.145124.6550@homer.UUCP>
Sender: news@sco.COM (News administration)

According to jko@homer.UUCP (Jonathan O'Neal) (in <1991Jun19.145124.6550@homer.UUCP>):
>
>   Greetings, netlanders, and especially you mail/MMDF gurus out there.
>We have MMDF running under SCO Unix SV3.2.2, and it's giving me a headache.
>No, not the usual one - I invested the hours and actually understand the
>ins and outs of the channels, domains, and the tailor file.  What I can't

Congratulations!

>seem to do is this: send a message to a friend with a "weird" but valid
>address.
>
>   The address in question looks like this:
>         "1234::username"@site.site.site

Ahah! A decnet address.  They are probably much more common
that micnet addresses.

>   If I quote the quotes so C-shell doesn't eat them, the address gets
>inserted correctly into the message itself, but the rmail command in 
>the outgoing UUCP command file says "rmail site.site.site!1234!!username".
>Someone downstream doesn't like the "!!" and these messages get rejected
>every time.  If I edit the /usr/spool/uucp/site/D.site### file (before it
>goes out) so the rmail command says "site.site.site!1234::username", the
>message gets transmitted successfully.

Good.

>
>   QUESTION: Is there some simpler way to do this?  I assume the UUCP
>channel program is massaging the address (even though it's in quotes),
>but I can't figure out how to tell it not to.  And racing to the
>/usr/spool/uucp/site directory after each message is getting old... ;-)

The good news is that it's _not_ the uucp channel.  Core MMDF
is not doing anything abnormal to your address at all.  The
problem is in one of mailx or execmail.  ":" is the separator
in micnet addresses, and somebody in the distant past of SCO
MMDF added code to one of these two programs (which are a "User
agent", as opposed to MMDF, which is a "Mail Transfer Agent")
to "correctly" rewrite colons to bangs so that MMDF could
better deal with them.  The problem is that the got a little
gung-ho, and rewrite the colons even in non-local addresses.
This "gung-ho-ity" has been added to the (now short) list of
bugs which need to be fixed.

The immediate answer to your problem is to switch to ELM (ouch)
or MH (ooch), or some other User agent which does not use
execmail.  (I hate having to say to switch away from the stuff
we sold).

--
David J. Fiander
SCO MMDF Development Team
SCO Canada, Inc.